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Monday, August 15, 2011

No Good Deed... Goes Un-Burned...

Burn Notice "No Good Deed" (S05E04)

Opening James Bond-like, Michael acknowledges this and meets up with his CIA contact, Max, at a swanky cocktail fundraiser. He gives him a quarter which contains an RFID tracker [hahahahaaha, wait... hahahaha, ...ok, we're good] to plant on an unknown target...a mission right up Michael's alley. While being bored to death with surveillance, Michael asked Max if he read his report on the people who burned him. Interrupted by the thieves making their move, Michael plays the role of a drunk and plants the 'RFID' tracker before getting kicked out.

Michael gives a quick lesson on obsession while working on the charger as Fiona grills him on his craze with the people who burned him. Michael's mom heads off to 'aqua-yoga' as Barry shows up with his brother, Paul, who has just had a server stolen from the Dade County teacher's credit union. Fi signs up Paul as a new client...

At the FDA, Michael meets Max at an apparently temporary office. Max tells Michael the bug he planted led to the French being the culprits. Their new mission is to steal some secrets back... fun. Fi heads to see Sam, who's living the good life at his girlfriend's hotel. He refuses to help Fi ... at first. Then she blackmails him by threatening to pretend to be his girlfriend...

Fi and Sam head to see Jesse, who has tracked down the server thief via ordering a bunch of high-tech equipment. The guy turns out to be Griffin (aka Big Show). Needless to say, it turns into a wrestling match almost immediately. Sam and Jesse call for Fi, who comes in with a shotgun loaded with beanbag rounds. Of course, it takes a shot to the groin to bring down Griffin.

Upon questioning Griffin/Gilbert, Jesse and Fiona threaten to turn him in to the law if he didn't spill his boss's name. He does and confesses other stuff he did for 'Eve.' After consulting Barry, the team learns she's probably setting up a Beowulf cluster to break the encrypted drive Griffin stole. Michael gives a lesson on how hackers work, and how to get in with them. "They're not looking for an equal partner, they're just looking for another loser to sneer at, so that's just what you give them." Michael shows up with Griffin playing a loser 'dinosaur' thief. Eve bites on a fake job of hacking a website for financial records and Michael gives her $10k plus an IP address. Fi and Maddie follow the red-head, who turns out to be pretty smart at identifying tales. [pulling a 'stop-and-see' in the middle of the road?] Fi forces Maddie to drive around her. [why's Maddie driving?]

The team switches to trying to track her digitally, so Michael pitches Max, but he pushes back, claiming he'll get in trouble. Michael lays on the guilt trip of the teachers' money being at risk while they hack the AC system to heat up the targeted office so the heat sensors can't see anything. By the end of the rewiring, Max agrees to track the hacker as long as Michael won't go near the address. [Good to know the CIA has the NSA at their disposal...]

Sam, Jesse, and Fi show up at Eve's place and learn it's got top-notch security. Sam suggests a diversionary break-in while they break in elsewhere, and gets stuck implementing his thought. Fi and Jesse get in, but don't see anything techy, so they swipe shredded docs instead.

Michael explains his shredding documents is just about having access to the right software. Michael meets Eve to finish the job, and Michael hires her to decrypt the file for a God-awful lot of money. [apparently I should quit my day job and decrypt files for a living... geez.] The plan is to nail Eve when she goes to use the same system for this new fake file as she has been for the teachers' server.

Barry and Paul show up at the loft to find Fi making a bomb [YES! Finally! Back to rule #1... Make a bomb...] Paul doesn't get the process and is worried, which leads to enough arguing to get a slap each from Fi. In the meantime, Max and Michael head off to break into the now-overheated room. After tricking a maintenance man, they find the stolen tablet sitting out on a desk... [a bit too easy maybe?] They turn the AC back on and head out.

Eve picks up Michael to go witness the decryption, and she sticks him with a sedative. Apparently, she figured out the escrow for the money Barry set up was fake. She takes him home, puts a bag over his head, and get him to confess who he's working for (since he couldn't have set up the fake account himself). Michael claims he's working for Dean Myers (the guy Eve's been working with to do hacking jobs), which Eve buys but refuses to share any of the money. He does convince her to turn on Myers, so they set him up.

Sam, Jesse, and Fi are waiting at the rendezvous bar when Eve walks up. She tries to negotiate with them, but Fi is a bit stand-offish. She sets up a meeting for the morning. The next day at the beach, Eve brings out Michael, who uses a few sentences to tell the team to still blow up things as planned. When Dean shows up and Eve confronts him with Michael, he obviously has no idea what's going on. The rest of the foursome comes in and subdues Dean before he can convince Eve she's been misled. At gunpoint, they load everything into her truck and then she makes them tie up their hands. She turns on Michael and is apparently about to kill them when Fi [finally] blows the bomb in the back of Eve's Jeep. More than a little pissed, Michael explains things to Eve with a foot on her throat.

Fiona takes the now-burned-up server to Paul, and actually has a good line: "Barry, I'm saying nice things. Don't make me shoot you." Also, Paul gives Fi a part for the Charger.

Michael heads in for a debriefing using the key card Max gave him at the beginning of this episode [why do I feel all hell is about to break loose...] at the FDA office. Michael finds Max shot on the floor. Max dies in Michael's arms as he grabs his gun and takes off after the killer. The killer runs and fires blanks at Michael, who's left holding the murder weapon and hears sirens outside. Michael calls Fi and asks her to come as he's apparently being framed. [Fi saying that Max was a good guy kinda hit viewers over the head with foreshadowing that something bad was about to happen...]

Photo by: Virginia Sherwood/USA Network

Michael heads in to steal the office access logs and makes it to the roof just in time to see the Charger fly around the corner. [awesome!] Fiona pulls out a rescue line launcher to shoot a line up to the roof for Michael, who uses his shoe to slide down the back of the building. He and Fi meet up with Sam to discuss the situation. Michael covered up his exit.. and therefore the killers. Sam brings in a box of ammo from Michael's former car that has the rest of the bullets not loaded in the murder weapon. Sam urges Michael to get moving, which apparently ignites some deep-down determination as all he can say is "Let's go to work."